Backsplash Part II: Finished project

As was roughly the goal, the backsplash now blends fairly unobtrusively with the rest of the kitchen:

That’s an outright compliment, coming from these:

Before we started

At the end of the first weekend of work, the tiles were in place, and we felt what we later learned was a false sense of being well on our way to finishing.

We grouted the tiles in white, which was our first big mistake.

White grout: fail.

Not only did the grout not cover the thinset (or match it) as well as we’d intended, but it also didn’t match the
old grout lines. About 1/3 of the way up the grout lines between tiles adjacent to the accent tiles, you can tell exactly where the new grout ends. It shares a disappointing resemblance with a Clorox commercial.

It took us most of the rest of the week to remove ALL of the white grout, old and new, with a battery powered Dremel that kept needing a recharge, without nicking the white tiles (which are terra cotta under the white enamel). We redid the grout with gray the second time around:

…which required pulling the stove out, but otherwise went pretty well. After a day or so to let it set, we sealed the grout lines between tiles, caulked the joint between the bottom tiles and the countertop, and used a brass-bristled brush to scrub the residual white grout out of the shell impressions. Then — ta-da! — put the kitchen back together after over a week in a disaster zone.

In a hypothetical next time on a project like this, I’d match the thinset to the grout. I’m not sure why we didn’t the first time — might’ve been that Lowe’s didn’t have a modest sized container of white thinset to go with the original white grout? I’d also give up the ghost on trying to match old grout to new grout.

All in all, though, we’re glad to have done the project. It was reasonably inexpensive, and clearly, game, set, and match to the shells. Such an improvement over than the old flower tiles! This will make the kitchen a lot more palatable in years going forward.

It does, however, reopen the cabinet discussion: to paint or not to paint. And if so, what color…?